MEDITATE AND DESTROY is a documentary about punk rock, spirituality, and inner rebellion. This powerful 81-minute film shows how author Noah Levine (Dharma Punx, Against the Stream) uses his personal experience and punk-rock sensibilities to connect with young people within juvenile halls and urban centers around the country. Tattoos, motorcycles, and an engaging punk rock soundtrack are featured in this hard hitting look at how Buddhism has a place in the world of punks.

Meditate and Destroy profiles bestselling author of Dharma Punx and Against the Stream, Noah Levine and his journey from a life of addiction and violence to taking on the role of dedicated meditation teacher and community leader. Interviews with family and friends, including renowned Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield, illustrate the driving forces that compelled Levine to turn to Buddhism, while conversations with his students testify to a man whose candor inspires others to integrate Buddhist teachings of nonviolence and inner peace with the experiences and challenges of Generation X. Tattoos, motorcycles, and Buddha are featured in this hard-hitting look at how Buddhism has a place in the urban world as it simultaneously opens our perception to the possibilities of finding new paths—even in our darkest hours.

Just that! *smile*...We Buddhists must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering. If we listen to Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettos, and the battlefields will become our temples. We have so much work to do. ... Peace is Possible! Step by Step. - Samtach Preah Maha Ghosananda "Step by Step" http://www.ghosananda.org/bio_book.html

BUT! it is important to become a real Buddhist first. Like Punna did: Punna Sutta Nate sante baram sokham _()_

Noah Levine is a great teacher. His book Dharma Punx was one of the first Buddhist books I read and I could really relate to his message being that I was coming from a similar background as his with the drugs, alcohol and heavy metal music. His book was really influential to me as I was just finding my way to the Dhamma and credit him in helping me find my way here. Noah has a great message for young Buddhist's and I highly recommend his books. I look forward to seeing this fim.

The heart of the path is SO simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are. That is all I do in my own practice. Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. Of course, there are dozens of meditation techniques to develop samadhi and many kinds of vipassana. But it all comes back to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. - Ajahn Chah

I beg to differ. Noah Levine is a soft-core white middle-class faux-punk.His book is a standard introduction spiced up with slang, a pretentious attitude, and pop-culture punk references.I love the 1-star reviews on Amazon, they really sum up my views of Noah's books.The film may be good, but I'm sure not going to waste my time finding out.

Then, saturated with joy, you will put an end to suffering and stress.SN 9.11

I agree with you James the Giant a little, but actually for many even such a step is already a big step. Actually it also has much danger to grow just into an additional subculture where the tendencies will over swap the Dhamma. Not many are able to really break out, but for some it will be a steppingstone. It's quite a good nourishing ground for the so modern "Bodhisattva" movements.

How every, even if it is a small seed, it might grow some times later on.

But maybe Bodom would share a little more to show how it could happen and how it happens when it happens not so good.

Just that! *smile*...We Buddhists must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering. If we listen to Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettos, and the battlefields will become our temples. We have so much work to do. ... Peace is Possible! Step by Step. - Samtach Preah Maha Ghosananda "Step by Step" http://www.ghosananda.org/bio_book.html

BUT! it is important to become a real Buddhist first. Like Punna did: Punna Sutta Nate sante baram sokham _()_

James the Giant wrote:I beg to differ. Noah Levine is a soft-core white middle-class faux-punk.His book is a standard introduction spiced up with slang, a pretentious attitude, and pop-culture punk references.I love the 1-star reviews on Amazon, they really sum up my views of Noah's books.The film may be good, but I'm sure not going to waste my time finding out.

Sorry you feel that way. The fact is for me his book spoke to the 20 year old strung out beat down drug addict that I was and helped me find my way to a new way of life with the Dhamma that I have today. If his book helped me than it can sure help others and thats enough for me to give it a glowing endorcement.

The heart of the path is SO simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are. That is all I do in my own practice. Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. Of course, there are dozens of meditation techniques to develop samadhi and many kinds of vipassana. But it all comes back to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. - Ajahn Chah

James wrote:I love the 1-star reviews on Amazon, they really sum up my views of Noah's books.

If you enjoyed the 1 star reviews you might also enjoy reading the 25 five star reviews it has received from those he has helped with his writings.

Here is but one example:

I related to this book so well, and so did my teen child, whom has discovered the punk rock genes in his blood. I had many fears that he would head down the same self-destructing road that so many of us have. After reading the book, he is now practicing the simple meditation techniques that Noah wrote of & that had first put Noah on his path to persuing Buddhism. This book opened up the doors to a better way of living for my child, the power of prayer & meditation is an amazing thing.

The heart of the path is SO simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are. That is all I do in my own practice. Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. Of course, there are dozens of meditation techniques to develop samadhi and many kinds of vipassana. But it all comes back to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. - Ajahn Chah

In earlier times I run some hard rock clubs and I guess I know those rebels very good. They have a real strong potential, mostly much more as the so called modest. When such rebels come in touch with the right path, they are like rockets.

They know suffering well, they have done much meditation on death and feeling without knowing consciously. People walking on the edge, if they get the chance (which is of cause a matter of their past actions) have a total different access, which comes from understanding the first and second noble truth mostly from own understanding and do not work through much intellectualism.

Just that! *smile*...We Buddhists must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering. If we listen to Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettos, and the battlefields will become our temples. We have so much work to do. ... Peace is Possible! Step by Step. - Samtach Preah Maha Ghosananda "Step by Step" http://www.ghosananda.org/bio_book.html

BUT! it is important to become a real Buddhist first. Like Punna did: Punna Sutta Nate sante baram sokham _()_

marc108 wrote:I've never read his books, but I've listened to quite a bit of his Dhamma talks & have benefited from them greatly. Mr Levine is a skilled teacher, and imo, an innovator in where/how he is teaching.

Exactly. He is reaching a wider audience and spreading the Dhamma to those who may have never heard it. I know for myself I might have never picked up a book on Buddhism if it hadnt been for the presentation of Noah's book and the target audience it is intended for.

It seems as if the majority of negative reviews are coming from those who are more concerned about Noah's "street cred" ie. he wasn't a real punk, than with the actual message he is sharing which is the Buddhadhamma. How any practicing Buddhists can find fault with him while he is helping others is beyond me.

The heart of the path is SO simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are. That is all I do in my own practice. Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. Of course, there are dozens of meditation techniques to develop samadhi and many kinds of vipassana. But it all comes back to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. - Ajahn Chah

bodom wrote:How any practicing Buddhists can find fault with him while he is helping others is beyond me.

Maybe this article gives a small idea of the "danger", of cause it has to be seen in the context of Dhamma and Dhamma as a cool consume article. We can not easy ignore that it is mostly in this way. Not every kind of help is deep inside meant as help (selfless). As long as we are addicted we use to deal with or objects of addition to maintain our existence.But its not only the case with Noah, I guess its a general "normal" person as teacher problem.

Marcuse Reconsidered

Herbert Marcuse said advanced society created false needs which intergrate the individual into the system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, and contemporary thought modes.

The result is "one dimensional thought" and behavior of conformity and assimilation.

He promoted the "great refusal" as the only way to adequately respond to the all-encompassing methods of control.

He advocated "negative thinking" as a response to the positivism of consumer society.

Consumerism is a form of social control. We do not live in a free society, he said, except for the freedom to buy happiness.

We work to buy things we do not need, with damaging effects:

1) damaging psychic/spiritual effects.

2) damaging enviornmental effects.

3) we use material objects to mediate social connection (alienation).

The "great refusal" is the protest against unnecessary repression, the struggle for the ultimate form of freedom.

His ideas are presented in his books: Eros and Civilization (1955), and One Dimensional Man (1964).

Today, the desire to be "cool" has been incorporated into consumer culture.

"Cool capitalism is the incorporation of disaffection into capitalism. 'Cool' is the front region of capitalism today for those who are seduced by its cultural appeal and especially also for those who aspire, mostly in frustration, to the greatest fruits of a capitalist civilization. For capitalism to command hearts and minds, it is necessary to mask out its less appealing back regions." [Cool Capitalism, Jim McGuigon]

Cool capitalism incorporates disaffection into capitalism itself, absorbing rebellion and thereby neutralizing opposition to the present system of culture and society.

In the countercultural analysis, simply having fun comes to be seen as the ultimate subversive act. Hedonism is seen as revolutionary doctrine. Is it any wonder that this kind of countercultural rebellion has reinvigorated consumer capitalism?

When ever possible, do not get the message as something political, but just as a psychological fact. Buddha teaches to be cool and many want to be cool. To transport the way between is very difficult and could damage the real coolness easy. So it needs to be pushed to do not fail.

Just that! *smile*...We Buddhists must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering. If we listen to Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettos, and the battlefields will become our temples. We have so much work to do. ... Peace is Possible! Step by Step. - Samtach Preah Maha Ghosananda "Step by Step" http://www.ghosananda.org/bio_book.html

BUT! it is important to become a real Buddhist first. Like Punna did: Punna Sutta Nate sante baram sokham _()_

bodom wrote:How any practicing Buddhists can find fault with him while he is helping others is beyond me.

Indeed!

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Of course, it is good to help others. No one would disagree with that general statement. But I'm with James on this one. I'm very familiar with Santa Cruz, having spent all my summers there as a kid. It's a very nice, very expensive, very liberal beach town about an hour from San Francisco. The local "punks" are either disaffected from their wealthy parents or just bums who are tolerated by the locals, many of whom work at the nearby University.

alan wrote:The local "punks" are either disaffected from their wealthy parents or just bums who are tolerated by the locals, many of whom work at the nearby University.

Hi Alan

Which has anything to do with what? Im not quite sure what either yours or James point is?

The heart of the path is SO simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are. That is all I do in my own practice. Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. Of course, there are dozens of meditation techniques to develop samadhi and many kinds of vipassana. But it all comes back to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. - Ajahn Chah

alan wrote:Happy to hear you've benefitted from it, bodom. Anything else I say would be negative. So I won't say it.

Thanks Alan.

The heart of the path is SO simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are. That is all I do in my own practice. Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. Of course, there are dozens of meditation techniques to develop samadhi and many kinds of vipassana. But it all comes back to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. - Ajahn Chah

James the Giant wrote:I beg to differ. Noah Levine is a soft-core white middle-class faux-punk.His book is a standard introduction spiced up with slang, a pretentious attitude, and pop-culture punk references.I love the 1-star reviews on Amazon, they really sum up my views of Noah's books.The film may be good, but I'm sure not going to waste my time finding out.

Most punks are soft-core white middle-class kids. If you wanted to rule out anyone with rich parents or a privileged upbringing, then there's not going to be anyone left in most scenes out there. There's no benefit in playing the "who is punk enough" game. I don't mean to be confrontational, but it's an attitude that I come up against a lot and I think it's needlessly exclusive.

Noah Levine's books aren't for me, but they're solid introductions and I don't think it's fair to criticize someone who does so much good in the prison systems. Any introduction to the Dhamma is a good one!

Gain and loss, status and disgrace, censure and praise, pleasure and pain:these conditions among human beings are inconstant,impermanent, subject to change.